Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(127)

Though, truly, what were the chances of occupancy? There was hardly anyone here.

Scanning the parking spaces in front of them, he saw a black Mercedes that was desperately trying to look newer than it actually was . . . and a truck with a cap over its bed. The other two cars were way down at the far end, by the office.

This was perfect for the kind of purpose they’d fulfilled. Secluded. Populated with people who wanted no one in their business and were prepared to extend a similar courtesy to others. And the exterior lighting was poor: Only one out of every six bulbs by the doors worked—hell, the lighting fixture next to his head had been smashed. So everything was dim and dark.

He and his band of bastards were going to have to find females of their race to service their blood needs long-term, but that would come. Until then? They would partake from the likes of what he and Throe had just f*cked, and they would do it here in this deserted place.

Throe spoke quietly. “Satisfied?”

“Aye. She was well and good.”

“I’m glad—”

A scent upon the air drew both of their heads toward the door to the terminating room. As Xcor inhaled deeply to confirm what he had caught a mere whiff of, the smell of fresh human blood was an unwelcome surprise.

Unlike the expression on Throe’s face. Which was an unwelcome nonsurprise.

“Do not even consider it,” Xcor bit out. “Throe—Fuck.”

The fighter was turning to the door with a thunderous expression—his aggression no doubt inflamed because that was female blood being spilled: The fertility was obvious in the air.

“We have no time for this,” Xcor spat.

In a manner of reply, Throe kicked the f*cking door in.

As Xcor cursed, he only briefly considered dematerializing out of the scene; all it took to cure the impulse was a look inside. Throe’s ridiculous heroic streak had opened the way to a mess. Literally.

A human female was tied down onto the bed, with something crammed into her mouth. She was almost dead—and too close to the edge of her grave to save. Her blood was everywhere, on the wall beside her, dripping onto the floor, soaking into the mattress. The tools of whoever had done this were on the bedside table: two knives, duct tape, scissors . . . and half a dozen small clear jars with colorless fluid in them and tops that were set aside.

There were things floating in the—

A slam echoed out of the bathroom. As if a transom or window had been opened and shut.

As Throe ran in, Xcor lunged forward and caught the other male by the arm. In a quick one/two, Xcor unclipped the steel cuff he kept on his weapons belt and clamped it on the thick wrist of his soldier. Hauling back with all his weight, he hauled the male around, swinging him like the ball on the end of a chain. There was a thump on the far wall as the cheap plaster stopped the vampire pendulum.

“Let me go.”

Xcor yanked the guy right in close. “This is not your concern.”

Throe pulled back his arm and threw out a punch into the wall, smashing the flat plane. “It is! Release me!”

Xcor slapped his palm on the back of the male’s neck. “Not. Your. World!”

They struggled at that point, the two of them wrestling and knocking into things, creating more noise than they should. And they were just about to fall on the bloodied carpet when a human man with no neck and sunglasses the size of windowpanes slid into the doorway. He took one look at the bed, another at Xcor and Throe, and then he muttered under his breath, covering his eyes with his forearms as he ducked out.

A split second later, the door to the room they had f*cked in opened and shut . . . then opened and shut again. High heels clip-clopped fast and uncoordinated, and there was a clomp, clomp of people getting into a car.

An engine roared and the Mercedes peeled out of the parking lot, no doubt with the whore and the cash in it.

And didn’t the fast departure prove Xcor’s assumption about the clientele here.

“Listen to me,” he said to Throe. “Listen to me, you stupid bastard—this is not our problem. But if you stay here, you make it so—”

“The killer got away!”

“And so are we.”

Throe’s pale eyes shot over to the bed, and the mask of anger slipped for a brief moment. What was underneath arrested even Xcor’s aggression. Such pain. God, such pain.

“She is not your sister,” Xcor whispered. “Now come with me.”

“I can’t . . . leave her. . . .” Wide glassy eyes hit his. “You cannot ask me to.”

Xcor spun around while keeping hold of his soldier. There had to be something of the murderer’s in here, something they could—

Xcor dragged his fighter into the bathroom, and there was a grim satisfaction to be found upon the window above the toilet. The single, thick pane of frosted glass was unbroken, but there was a bright red streak on the edge of the sharp metal casing.

Just the remnant that they needed.

Xcor reached up to the window and ran his two fingers around what had caught and torn the flesh of that human.

The blood cleaved unto his flesh, pooling.

“Open,” he commanded.

Throe parted his mouth and sucked those fingers down, closing his eyes to concentrate as distant sirens began to peal through the night.

“We must needs depart,” Xcor said. “Come with me now and I shall grant you leave to find the man. Agree? Nod.” When Throe did, he decided he needed more. “Swear to me.”